Q. 64 on the day. Scottie, I'll start with you. Your first round after winning the Masters. What was the vibe out there with the galleries, and just really since you got here this week and guys, other players talking to you about having won?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, all the congratulations at the beginning of the week was definitely nice. You don't really get tired of people telling you good job. It's been a bit busy off the course, but all things considered, I was ready to go this morning.
Ryan got us off to a good start. I didn't putt my best today. Other than that, we had a solid round. Ryan played really solid, and I had a few good holes in there. I feel good about how we finished.
Q. Ryan, what did you do out there to sort of pick the team up early on?
RYAN PALMER: It was probably one of my better days. Made some really good five, six footers. Made a good long putt on 14 -- I'm sorry. 12, it was, for birdie. I kept it in front of me pretty well today, I think.
I think some of the four, five, six-footers I made today, just for me personally, were crucial just for my psyche. I was telling Scottie, we didn't go out and kill it. I feel like not the best round following Patrick and Xander, what they shot, but we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot.
Shooting 8-under is still a good start to this tournament because the real fun starts tomorrow. You'll see a little bit of a difference tomorrow, I think.
Q. When you guys have to sort of -- I guess in this format you can kind of freewheel it a little bit because you've got a partner to back you up, and you have guys in your group that are shooting what they shot today, what does that do to your mindset?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: It doesn't do too much. We're out there kind of doing our own thing. It's very early in the week. Most of the time when that happens, you're kind of able to feed off their energy. You kind of see a little bit of a trend out here on TOUR where you get sometimes those pairings where all three guys will play well. So we kind of tried to watch their putting today and maybe help a few of ours go in.
Ryan fed off of it really well. I didn't make as many putts, but made a couple nice ones at the end.
Q. Just if you could speak to what the boys did there today, clearly they were in the zone a little. You guys played extremely well, but it must have felt you were spinning your wheels a little just because of what they were doing.
RYAN PALMER: Yeah, they made a lot. When Patrick was making his and he wasn't, then Xander was making his. I made the long putt on 12, and Xander backs it up with his 15, 18-footer for birdie. To shoot 13-under par low ball, that's what you have to do. Each one of you have to make five, six, seven birdies each, and they did that.
They played great. We played solid. Shooting 8-under par is not terrible. We're right there. Like I said, tomorrow's a totally different story. So look forward to the challenge.
Q. It's a different animal tomorrow, right? Where things can switch both ways pretty quickly.
RYAN PALMER: There's no doubt. You can hit different shots, but you can't rely on your partner to back you up on his shot because now he's got to go find that one you just hit.
It's a matter of not making the big mistake, which you can do in that format very easily. I'm not too worried about our games. It's a matter of just going out and making some more putts.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports